Faculty Focus: Jo Dumas

The Faculty Focus feature is a new, weekly question-and-answer spotlight on the administrators, instructors and all Penn State employees who keep the university running.

This week, Laura Nichols spoke with Jo Dumas, a senior lecturer in the College of Communications in film-video and media studies. Her teaching career began at Penn State, and she's since become very popular with classes like COMM 205: Women, Minorities and the Media.

What brought you to Penn State?

"Well, it's interesting. I had worked as an electrical engineer, actually, in broadcast television for years and my husband had come out here for a guest professor position for a short period of time, two semesters, and he actually fell in love with teaching and I realized the job that I loved would give me a leave to do graduate work.

"So, I came here to earn a Master's, then I earned a doctorate and by that time, I had also fallen in love with teaching, so I came out here to teach after my degrees here."

Catch the full interview, including Professor Dumas' thoughts on the 20 women elected to the United States Senate in the 2012 general election:

Any fan of Penn State athletics knows that most Nittany Lion athletes make their way to Happy Valley from the Northeast. Recruiting articles about some of the nation's top talent coming out of New Jersey, Delaware, New York and Ohio is common place.

But what about Fort Saskatchewan?

With 10 days before its next game, the Penn State men's hockey team is taking some time to recharge the batteries,